The Ultimate Panther Collection

Now that you can buy a copy of my Pink Panther Guide for as little as 24Â¢ on Amazon, MGM Home Entertainment is including it with The Pink Panther Ultimate Collection a DVD collection of allalmost all Panther live action features and animated shorts owned by United Artists (MGM). This does not include Return of The Pink Panther with those gorgeous Richard Williams opening titles. However, among the 18 dvds are more Inspector, Roland and Ratfink and Ant and Aardvark cartoons than you’ll ever need. Oh, and I as I’ve mentioned, they’re throwing in a copy of my Ultimate Pink Panther book. The Pink Panther Ultimate Collection will cost $199.98 and will go on sale November 25th. More details are posted here.

I have the UK Pink Panther Cartoon Collection which almost satisfies my need for anything on this but I could end up buying it just for the Blue Aardvark cartoons. They aren’t available on any other set, are they?

“More than you’ll ever need”? Jerry, did you just slam the Ant and the Aardvark shorts?

Jason

IMO, the only good Pink Panther is the original Panther in the opening credits of the original Pink Panther film. He was cool-looking then. The scrawny, awkward, stiff-looking Panther that emerged later had little to commend it. Oh, and there was one short cartoon that rocked – the one where the Panther tries to paint everything pink and this little guy was trying to paint everything blue. Otherwise the Panther shorts are substandard. And the Aardvark, while it benefitted from John Byner’s voice talents, was just another variation of the Roadrunner, and not a very funny one at that.

Sealtest

“The Pink Phink”, the sole good Pink Panther short, won the Oscar and Friz directed it. Friz’s original PP main titles are decent (the first ones animated by Virgil Ross) and the later Dick Williams/Ken Harris titles trump them all. The rest of the PP output, including the upcoming “Pink Panther and Pals” series, not so much. The whole PP oeuvre was a commercially successful route for Friz to extend his Warners brand without embarrassing himself. That didn’t happen until he made those abysmal 1980’s paste-up bumpers with DFE-looking Looney Tunes characters.

The Depatie-Freleng theatrical shorts from the 1960s and 1970s deserve recognition for their use of the world’s most repulsive “wallpaper” incidental music. Something bad is wrong with that stuff. It creates anxiety and itchiness.

braderunnar

It is rather unfortunate that MGM does not own the home video rights to “Return” (you can thank United Artists and their outsourcing of the film to ITC for that), but it can be had on DVD for cheap anyway.

I think it seems likely that the ninth cartoon volume will have the made for TV PP cartoons that don’t have a single disc release. Since this is aiming to be as complete a collection as possible, it seems sensible that MGM would put all the PP cartoons in the set.

After all, they’re including Son of the Pink Panther; if MGM can put that in this set, they can definitely include cartoons like Pink Breakfast and Supermarket Pink (shudder).

Nicolas Orizaga

don’t you think Volume 9 is the Pink Panther animated specials that’s been released? how do you think this bodes for a Vol. 2 set of the cartoons? (Vol. 5-9)

I highly doubt it. I don’t think those would sell as well as the theatrical shorts (regardless of quality) would. Maybe MGM could include those as special features, but I don’t think they’d simply throw aside a good percentage of the Pink Panther cartoon filmography to make room for a few TV specials.

Although since you mention it, maybe MGM will include them as special features on that volume.

“how do you think this bodes for a Vol. 2 set of the cartoons? (Vol. 5-9)”

First off, the Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection boxset (5 discs) has all the Pink Panther cartoons released in theatres. If the ninth volume does indeed contain the made for TV shorts, why would MGM rip off people who already bought the boxset by including the same contents of the last disc in another set?

And secondly, volumes 5-8 do not star the Pink Panther. He appears on the cover just so people know The Inspector cartoons were made by the same studio as PP cartoons. So why bother releasing a second set if the Pink Panther barely appears?

1) Did I miss an announcement? I don’t remember Inspector Vol. 2 being announced separately. That’s what I’m waiting for.

2) The Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection is FIVE discs, but note that the Ant-Aardvak single-disk is titled volume FIVE, not six as you might expect if you, like me, gentle reader, are an adherent to the base-10 numbering system. Therefore I would guess that in the Ultimate Collection, volumes 1-4 are the first four Pink Panther cartoon discs, and the mysterious “volume 9” is really the afore-mentioned fifth Pink Panther disc.

Jamie

I agree with Tea Buscuit about Vol 9 likely being a port of vol 5 from the original set, but this means that the three TV specials will be left out of the big set again! Surely they are more important than Roland and Ratfink to this collection! Also, will the title sequences from the PP TV show make an appearance this time? The Ant and the Aardvark and Crazy Legs Crane era openings and closers would be most welcome additions if any of these discs are being reburnt.

Laughter Free tracks on those early Pinkn Panther shorts affected last time would be a brilliant incentive to rebuy too, btw….

Jeffrey Gray

Hey Jerry, why was Return of the Pink Panther completely left out of the Ultimate Visual Guide, anyways? Did MGM not want to make reference to a title they didn’t own or something?

Jefferey – MGM (United Artists) does not own RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER (even though UA released it in 1975). We could not post any photos in the book because the rights holder (ITC Entertainment) would not grant us permission. I do list the film in the book in the filmography on page 136 and there I mention how we couldn’t obtain permission to showcase it.

I just hope that the remaining 17 Inspector cartoons, Roland and Rattfink, Tijuana Toads, Blue Racer, The Dogfather and Hoot Kloot get seperate releases too. I have 90% of these anyway but official ones will always be better.

Sumner Northcutt

In Germany a few months ago was released 3 DVDs: The Blue Aadvark and Inspector 1 and 2. The PAL Region 2 disks have englich menus, audio and subtitles.
A few years (when Return was released by Universal, one could get ALL of the Peter Sellers PP films in one box. This was some sort of cooperation between Sony and Universal. That 6 film box is long of of print.